(We welcome back one of our early writers, TheMadIsraeli, and his review of a new album by Sylosis that’s due for release on February 20th by Nuclear Blast.)
It’s been a long while hasn’t it? More than six years by my count and I’ve been checked out as a music enthusiast for most of it. I won’t go into why, but I’m ready to come back and talk about some sick metal records, and starting my return to NCS with a Sylosis record feels about as appropriate for me as it gets. Before we get to talking about The New Flesh we ought to talk about my history with this band.
I discovered them all the way back when their debut full-length Conclusion Of An Age had just come out, and it blew me away. The commitment to mixing modern metalcore conventions and melodic vocal hooks with an extremely technical and precise thrash approach in the vein of Forbidden, Metallica, Testament, and the like really spoke to me, and it kept me hooked.
Sylosis is an all-time favorite band of mine. Edge Of The Earth is one of modern metal’s ALL TIME GREATEST records. I am a fanboy for this band, a simp, and an admirer as a guitarist of Josh Middleton and his commitment as a composer to keeping things melodic, technical, and deep. UNTIL that is, Cycle Of Suffering.
photo by Jake Owens
I reviewed the record, and I was more positive on it than negative, but the very sudden HEAVY lean into their metalcore elements was going to turn me off if it became the focus of a new direction rather than just a one-off experiment. A Sign Of Things To Come was the result of that, an album I just… didn’t remember after spinning it a few times. I could only ever remember “Poison For The Lost” because of how heavily it was pushed for a single. They had, in my opinion, lost their edge. They lost their power, their diversity of writing, and had opted in for more radio-friendly hooks in a way that made me decide “this band isn’t for me anymore”.
That was fine by the way, I’m not saying they were shit or that they sold out, but Josh’s time in Architects had maybe influenced them more than I had hoped it would.
That is, until that first single, the title track of the record that’s the subject of this review, “The New Flesh“, dropped. It was all back — the aggression, the speed, the riffs, the emotive melancholic melodic hooks — but something was different this time. “Erased” came out next, and it further cemented my feelings. This was Sylosis, but meaner, uglier, heavier, and more pissed-off than they’d ever been before.
Josh Middleton is foaming at the mouth pissed at the world and everything about it, and it comes out. If it’s a groove, it’s like ACTUALLY getting beaten to death with a guitar; if it’s fast it’s reaching Vader levels of intensity, like on the opener “Beneath The Surface”; if the riffs have lots of moving parts to them, they are stripped-down slightly, to let more of an aggro breathe, the likes of which is very comparable to “God Hates Us All” or the average Ringworm record. The New Flesh is really fucking good. That’s what I’m saying here.
It’s when the band channeled some surprisingly Misery Index-esque death metal groove and power that caught me most off-guard though. “Erased” is a good example of it but better ones come later, with “Mirror Mirror” and “All Glory, No Valour” unlike anything you’ve ever heard from Sylosis before in any way. “Spared From The Guillotine” is a surprisingly straight thrash number that sounds like it could’ve been written by Slayer, Forbidden, Exodus, or Testament, leaning more into that more aggro early-to-late 2000s energy a lot of those very bands did, in keeping with the album’s overall sonic theme.
They couldn’t help themselves, I got to admit, and there’s ANOTHER ballad in “Everywhere At Once” but it’s better than what they’ve been doing. It’s less metalcore and more Metallica, which I’ll take. You’ll also be surprised here and there with the Dark Tranquillity-esque melodic death metal and Metallica style stomp of “Lacerations” and the unexpectedly melodic black metal viciousness contained in “Adorn My Throne”, which also hits a melodic death metal vibe but closer to Omnium Gatherum in its case. Also love the Fear Factory-esque ending segment. I’m not kidding, you’ll see when you hear it.
Didnt want to make my first one back a long one, and in the case of The New Flesh it doesn’t need to be. Sylosis still have it, and Josh Middleton especially proves he’s not only still got it, he’s stretching his song-writing muscles in new compelling directions that maintain the spirit of what Sylosis is while maintaining that intensity and all-consuming melancholic anger that drew me to them to begin with. I’ll consider half of Cycle Of Suffering and all of A Sign Of Things To Come a fluke. This is a pretty killer apology.